


sequence

by ghost_lingering



Category: Farscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-14
Updated: 2006-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:12:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_lingering/pseuds/ghost_lingering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crichton, stuck in a wormhole loop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sequence

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely set after 3.21, but with spoilers for all of Season 4.

1.

He ran, the radius of the blast catching up to him. A static voice over the comms gave a superfluous command:

"Crichton, get out of there, the carrier is blowing up."

Aeryn, ever on duty, ever the consumate peacekeep, was keepting him in check, making sure he did everything according to regs...

...that wasn't right. (At least they weren't doing the Rocky Horror remix this time.)

There was a wormhole waiting for him when he flew off the disintegrating vessel.

"Goodbye...Aeryn."

This time, he would get it right.

2.

You run, pushing ahead of the blast radius, ignoring the command comming over the comms:

"The carrier will completely disintegrated in a quater arn. Begin escape procedures imediately."

The AERYN is always the same. Monotonous compter stating the obvious.

A wormhole waits in the space out side the vessel.

You are flying towards it before you realize that this is not your reality.

As you head for the opening, the AERYN drones in your ear about optimum vectors. You say "shut up" instead of goodbye and try to remember your home reality.

3.

There is running, ahead of the blast radius, ever moving, ever moving, feet pounding on the command carrier's floor. 'This is for the resistance, this is for the—'

"JC? Run faster you frelling—"

Aeryn's voice on the head set, and then a laugh, sharp. Must be Nerri, running his fingers through her butch hair, chopped an inch from her skull.

Chiana had been the one to cut it, her nimble fingers weaving around Aeryn's head ("Get this...mane off, right girl?") and her toungue in Aeryn's ear. Nerri had stood by, almost leering. Leening against the wall, raslask and something stronger in his hand, he'd made eye contact and nodded towards his sister and the sebacean as they fingered strands of hair and bit each other's tongues. Grabbing his crotch, he had raised his eyebrows and exited. Nerri hadn't slept alone that—

—not right, not right, not right. Hadn't even happened with DK. Hadn't even happened.

The wormhole opens and swallows. There is no thought of right or wrong, just a sticky feeling in the palm of the hand and release. It sounds like an orgasm and no one says goodbye.

4.

There is a blast. He runs, beyond its radius.

There are no comms. Here Aeryn's voice doesn't come to him through electromagnetic energy; it is electomagnetic energy.

"The blast wasn't strong enough to penetrate this far, just don't get caught on the way to your module and you'll be fine."

Her voice is Obi-Wan Kenobied, above his right ear. When she talks he wants to turn and look at her, but there is never anything beyond her disembodied voice.

"Right. Aeryn, is there anyone down the corridor?"

He doesn't pretend to understand it, but she knows what's about to come, what's ahead. She knew that his twin on Moya died by D'Argo's angry hand, that Chiana was trapped in a coma with visions of the future. When she told him, he wondered if, instead of finding her on Valldon after she died on Dam-Ba-Da, he should have gone back to—

"Crichton—"

It's Aeryn's voice, but then he remembers Moya and how Aeryn didn't die. When the wormhole opens he plots a new trajectory. When Aeryn's voice begins to fade through his body, he closes his eyes and forgets what he'd supposed to whisper.

5.

The blast radius: behind, but ever growing. His module: ahead, brought closer by his running feet. Chiana's voice comes over the comms:

"You alright, there?" she sounds worried, broken and breathy.

"Doing just fine Pip, be back home to Moya in no time."

He feels her relax across the comm channel, and he runs faster; he promised he'd be home by dinner.

"It's fine Pip, almost there."

There's a pause for a moment, and he hears D'Argo's voice arguing with Jothee. (When don't they argue? He and Chi look on, bitting their lips and collapsing in laughter when they get to the halls. Each Luxon is so pig-headed, so concerned for the other, never wanting to let the other go. Enduring and infurierating.) Finally Chi speaks.

"D'Argo wants to pick you up in Lo'la."

And Jothee got worried, no doubt. "No, it's ok, tell him I'll be fine."

There's a scuffle over the comms. "Frell, John, let me pick you up!" D'Argo's voice is gruff, but there is real concern behind it.

"No, D, I've got it."

"But—"

"It's fine, I—listen, I've got to go, see you in a quarter arn."

There is a woman in front of him, the test pilot for Scorpy's wormhole experiment.

"The command carrier's blowing up." Her voice is calm, clinical. He can't remember her name. Erin?

"Like the fourth of July."

Her gun is in her hands, pointing downwards.

"Do you know how many people you have killed?"

She is beautiful, with dark hair. Almost human.

"Do you know how many people would have died if I hadn't?"

He's so tired, just wants to go back to Moya and curl beside Chiana and sleep. No Scorpius, no Crais. The woman is talking again.

"These people had friends and lovers and—"

"Thought Peacekeepers didn't have lovers, friends. Against the regs."

She looks like she was slapped.

"You killed children," and quieter, "Probably my daughter."

He thinks of the child he left on the Royal Planet and the one he and Chiana will never be able to conceive, much less raise.

"At least she doesn't have to grow up in this universe."

A secondary explosion shakes the ship and she is hit with burning metal. She falls, half her face dissolved, and he almost remembers something. A gun going off, the word baby, bioloid? But then he hears Scorpius saying, a few days ago, "Aeryn Sun, are you sure you can fly this mission with your...condition?"

He pauses, looking at her corpse. She doesn't look pregnant. He picks up her gun and puts it in his holster. "Goodbye Aeryn Sun." It's the best he can do.

He begins to run again, then turns around and stares at the body. "Aeryn?"

When he finally flys off the carrier, he doesn't think about Chiana (how she fed him Shelak in bed, cooked all different ways, trying to find a recipe which tasted like chicken; how she kissed his temple after they made love; how she gave up the Resistance and he Earth; how she had stayed up late those first monens teaching herself English). Then the wormhole swallows him, and he doesn't think at all.

6.

The blast is burning your neck and you feel your daughter's tiny hands clutch your back as you run with her to the module.

"How's Aeryn?" Pilot's voice is low, tense, and you can feel your shipmates standing in by him in nervous silence.

"I've got her. Be there in a quarter arn."

"We won't leave without you," says D'Argo with the same voice Pilot used. He is determined to save your daughter, perhaps to make up for the son whose limp body he found and cast into space.

You hear Chiana whimper in the background.

Aeryn doesn't talk or cry as you run with her in your arms. You castrated Braca and gutted Scorpius before her eyes, but she'd seen worse.

You'd done her mother on the Zelbinion; she, with a pulse pistol to your head, had asked what you knew of Tauvo. Her hands were limber from the tech work her regiment was assigned; her arms strong, residue from the prowler pilot she once was. Her back against a wall, pants at ankles, she had come, then asked about Tauvo.

"Don't know him," though you and he had shared food cubes at breakfast. (And saliva, the situation strange—somewhere between intimate and bussiness like, both of you rubbing against whatever you could find, so desperate you resorted to each other's hands. D'Argo had not been an option, so you and Tauvo became something like brothers, something like lovers, something like prostitutes, and disgusted—you for fucking a man, and he for frelling an alien.)

"Crais' brother?" her hair about her shoulders and you had shaken your head.

She didn't say anything, but you knew her story: Crais condemned his brother to death, assigned his regiment to tech work, then helped you all escape—the last brotherly act he was able to perform. She was left behind and Crais was torchered for your location, but he never betrayed Tauvo.

Her eyes closed and you asked her name.

"Aeryn."

Later, when you weren't able to steal the nerve tissue for Tauvo and he died in your arms—both more and less a romance than it sounds—you saw her and she had had a child.

"Yours," she whispered, then walked away.

You brought the girl aboard because you didn't know what else to do. You called her Aeryn. She called you Human. You loved her. She ignored you. It's always the same story.

It was months before her neural clone began to show.

Now, you move to set her in the module.

"Wait." She looks at you and you're reminded of her mother—dark hair, large eyes.

"Baby, we've got to move, the carrier's blowing up."

"This isn't your reality."

When you lift off, you still can't remember, but DNA doesn't lie and your daughter contains as many wormholes as you.

"Goodbye Aeryn," and you're not sure to which one you speak.

7.

There is no blast, only your mind playing tricks. You run. There is no blast, only your mind playing tricks.

"Crichton." It sounds like Aeryn, her harsh voice, her strong commands. "Crichton."

It is not Aeryn, she is not here, and there is no blast, only your mind playing tricks.

"Crichton!"

"Yes?" You answer, it is Aeryn, you have to answer, though Aeryn is not really here and it is only your mind playing tricks.

"Stay here, you frelling moron!"

You run. You run to your module, passing through the command carrier, white walls and Hawaiian flowers hanging from the ceiling. You have tried the standard override command many times, but nothing happens, you are still stuck in the blob. (Damn Chiana for dying on you here, for getting killed by the Southern belle in the tower—though, damn, that woman sure knew how to weild a corset). Now you're stuck (have been stuck for days, years?) in this damn Stark-induced "Being John Malkovich" version of your mind.

The module lifts off and there is a green door floating in space and a wormhole right next to it. You focus and ignore the fake Aeryn and hope your kind of override will work.

8.

"I ran, and there was this blast behind me, me all alone, the freaks too stupid to help, and I reached the module on time and..."

DK regals everyone with the story of...some thing or other that had happened to him in outer space. Your father, in particular, laughs. You've always been glad it was DK and not you in the module, but your dad's never looked at you like that, for all you know he's mighty proud of you.

You keep looking at DK funny because there must be some sign of wear, some indication that his life was more than a space western, but there is only his smiling face, his bright eyes, and his companions, who make no sound, caged, in a detention center in Sydney.

No one else pays much attention to the aliens (because that's what they are, even if the government doesn't like to use the term for fear some reporter will hear it, though what serious journalist would give such a wacked up story the time of day?), save for the medical tests and security details. But you like going and looking at them, at the squat bodies and different colors and human faces. You talk to them sometimes, as though they can understand you. It almost seems they can understand you.

"What are your names?" you ask one day, when you're sitting there, looking in their cage, notebook in hand, gaurds positioned on the other side of the door.

One of the white and black ones blinks. None of the others move. The two tentacled ones sit, their backs to you. The short green one is in a corner, on the lap of the blue bald thing. There are the two girls (though you hesitate to assign a gender), both with red hair, holding their arms around each other, still. A wrinkled woman sits, the third eye on her forehead changing colors. The second white and black one stands still; you haven't seen him move from the same spot, without the insistence of the medical staff.

And there is the woman. She has something of a following among the scientists. None will ever admit it, but she throws them, with their impersonal tests.

"What really happened in space?"

The white and black one walks closer to the bars and stares at you. You stare back.

"What happened?"

The gaurds shift, bored, the novelty of their charges worn off long ago.

"What happened?"

You step closer and you could touch her, if you wanted, through the bars.

"This." And her eyes turn white or blue or red and you see wormholes and DK in a uniform beating the girl (for she is a girl now, she is a girl called Chiana) and bedding Aeryn and cutting off the arm of a shell like creature for barter and wormholes, all you see is wormholes and when you steal the Farscape module and fly, you smile big and say hello, because, John, baby, this is going to be quite the adventure—eat your heart out dad, looks like I'm going to be your kind of son afterall.

9.

He replays the blast in his mind; his feet running past, and this time he makes it to the module, but waits that extra micron, or this time he doesn't make it and they burn together, or this time Aeryn doesn't say over the comms:

"Keep frelling running, I'll be fine."

In the present, Moya calls to him, maybe, but Aeryn is still disintegrated (her remains look like coffee grounds and sit on the dash board of his module) and there are other realities where she is, maybe, still alive, so he heads down the wormhole, blind and without thought, and says goodbye.

10.

She ran, the blast radius catching up to her.

"Crichton! Get out of there you frelling tralk!" She heard Aeryn's voice over the comms as she ran, her feet and breath keeping time with the explosions and screams.

Somewhere in front of her there was the module and she remembers Chiana's voice in her ear the night before, "Just, run, baby, and you'll do fine." She blushes, a little, a runs faster, suddenly paranoid that Aeryn can hear her thoughts over the comms.

"Do you want me to pick you up?" D'Argo, fatherly and concerned.

Crichton knows that D'Argo had once hoped that she would become his daughter-in-law, but then Jothee meet Nerri and it was quickly clear that there was more than one reason a Luxan-Sabacean hybred would join the Nebari resistance.

"No, D, I'm fine. Just have a bit more to run."

She hears the distant range of fires in the background, the durr of Keanu's engine, and the soundless vacumn of space. She fingers Christian, always against her thigh.

Moya is on the left of her viewscreen and the wormhole is on the right. In her head she remembers Chiana's words the night before, when they were both naked, laughing, and tangled in the sheets.

"Just, run, baby, and you'll do fine. Yes, even without me. Look, you go down one of your wormholes, right? In some universe we won't have the bastard Aeryn stealing Moya. In some universe he won't be after you for killing his sisters. They'll all be eaten by scarrens, and Stark's blue ass will be meditating outside of jail, and Harvey'll cook us all dinner."

When Crichton turns her ship towards the wormhole she prays Chiana is right. "Goodbye, Aeryn," she says, spitting out the name, hoping Aeryn doesn't exist in any other universe. She fingers the lock of grey hair Chiana gave her. She and Chiana don't say goodbye.


End file.
